Head of Engineering

Junior AI•New York, NY

1d•Hybrid

About The Position

Junior is building the AI operating system for investment research. Our software helps private equity firms, consultants and financial institutions complete high-stakes research workflows dramatically faster — from diligence and memo writing to market mapping, research synthesis and strategic analysis. We’re building toward a future where AI can run substantially more of that work: conducting research, understanding evidence and producing outputs customers can use to make decisions. The company is bootstrapped and profitable with ~$28M+ ARR, after growing 10x last year. It has 65+ people across New York, London and Sydney, with an ~20-person engineering team across four to five teams. Junior is trusted by leading private equity firms, consultancies and financial institutions. The core stack is TypeScript, Next.js and PostgreSQL. AI-assisted development has already changed how quickly we can build. Our current engineering team operates with the output of a much larger organization — and that pace is only increasing. We’re now looking for someone to build the engineering organization for Junior’s next chapter. You’ll report to our CTO and own the day-to-day operation of engineering: people, planning, delivery, reliability and recruiting. The CTO will continue to own product and technology direction, frontier experimentation, AI-native development and consequential long-term architecture. You’ll turn that direction into results. You’ll have the authority to challenge scope, sequencing and commitments when they aren’t credible — and the responsibility to make sure the organization delivers on the ones it makes. This is not a role where you spend your first three months observing from the sidelines. You’ll begin by doing the work: Ship production code, Learn our systems and development tools, Join architecture and debugging discussions, Work directly with engineers, Product and customers, Take an on-call shift, Build firsthand context before changing how the organization operates. You’ll progressively take ownership of engineering operations, but this will remain a deeply technical leadership role. You’ll stay close to the code, architecture and important production problems.

Requirements

Still deeply technical and can write production code, understand unfamiliar systems and debug difficult problems.
Led engineering teams through meaningful growth and ambiguity.
Can point to specific improvements made across delivery, reliability and organizational clarity.
Hired excellent engineers and developed strong ICs and engineering leaders.
Comfortable giving difficult feedback and making performance decisions.
Knows when management and process help — and when they get in the way.
Built software where reliability, security and customer trust genuinely matter.
Uses AI development tools thoughtfully and has strong views on how they will change engineering teams.
Can challenge a highly technical founder constructively.
Wants to work closely with Product, customers and the codebase.
Based in New York, or committed to relocating, and excited to work with the team in person.
Prior VP or Head of Engineering experience is not required.

Responsibilities

Own the day-to-day operation of engineering: people, planning, delivery, reliability and recruiting.
Turn product and technology direction into results.
Challenge scope, sequencing and commitments when they aren’t credible.
Make sure the organization delivers on its commitments.
Ship production code.
Learn our systems and development tools.
Join architecture and debugging discussions.
Work directly with engineers, Product and customers.
Take an on-call shift.
Build firsthand context before changing how the organization operates.
Progressively take ownership of engineering operations.
Stay close to the code, architecture and important production problems.
Set clear priorities, owners and achievable scope across Engineering, Product and Design.
Develop hands-on Engineering Leads who can run strong, autonomous teams.
Build a lean organization capable of growing toward 40–60 engineers where the business justifies it.
Own engineering hiring and help maintain a very high technical bar as the team grows.
Lead feedback, performance and development while giving excellent ICs room to grow without becoming managers.
Establish clear ownership of critical systems, improve incident response and eliminate recurring failures.
Remove friction across tooling, testing, reviews and delivery.
Turn AI-assisted engineering into measurable improvements in speed and quality.
Own engineering’s infrastructure, tooling and AI spend — and be accountable for the value we get from it.
Introduce structure where it helps us move faster — and remove it when it doesn’t.